Posted by wintermute on Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:20 | #

Are you out there, people?

I take your somber meditation on the Brontës as a sign that you have finished with the new Harry Potter book and are in want of another good summer read.

Here’s an 1826 potboiler that practically has your name on it:

The Last Man was Mary Shelley’s most ambitious and experimental work. Necessitating that a plague, which decimates mankind, is justified in its pursuit, Mary Shelley creates a world where utopian ideals can cause the destruction of mankind, if they are not checked by moral and ethical standards. Published in 1826, the novel was widely pilloried by a public who found it’s gloomy tone and high Romanticism to be ‘out of touch’ with a more progressive society. Mary Shelley’s concept of humanity decimated by a deadly plague affronted progressive politicians as godless and as a result, the novel was banned in Austria and became more of an in topic at dinner parties than a book to be seriously read. Since its publication, Mary Shelley scholars have ignored The Last Man and concentrated on Frankenstein because of the novel’s reflection of the influential Romantic circle of Lord Byron and Percy Shelley. It wasn’t until the feminist movement of the 1970’s that the novel underwent a rebirth and became critically judged as a work far superior to Frankenstein. Written three years after the death of Percy Shelley, The Last Man is a reflection of the political influence of William Godwin and the Romantic ideals of Lord Byron and Percy Shelley. Despite her initial desire to dedicate the work to the ideology of these men, The Last Man serves as Mary Shelley’s repudiation of the utopian ideal perpetuated by Godwin, Shelley and Lord Byron. The plague serves as a metaphor for the failure of the utopian ideal to support the traditional needs of the family. As a biographical and political novel, The Last Man is Mary Shelley’s quest to understand her husband, father and Lord Byron’s political ideals and their subsequent failure to support her and her children.

Weren’t you just saying something about the utopian ideal and the needs of the family?

“Artists are the antennae of the race, but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust their great artists.” - Ezra Pound

Posted by Guessedworker on Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:56 | #

Harry P?  Too difficult for me.

As so often, you take my meaning effortlessly.  You know, you really should have followed through and provided us with some learned adumbrations to post.  Promises may be broken many times for many reasons, but need be honoured only once for the satisfaction of friends.

I shall seek out The Last Man.  How gratifying that the themes we try to raise here were damning “progressivism” from the outset.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Mon, 30 Jul 2007 02:09 | #

“Are you out there, people?”  (—from the log entry)

This person, posting in a comments thread over at Turnabout, says they’re out there but refuse to engage:

“Why are so many liberal elites not bothered by multiculturalism — a condition where the concept of unified or mainstream culture is disdained in favor of a mosaic of many cultures where each of them are supposed to be equal to the other?” 

Oh, but they are bothered by it. Where do liberal elites send their children to school? How do they raise their children?

“In this country, the people who run things — who populate major law firms and corporate boards — understand all of this at some level. They pay lip service to multiculturalism and diversity and nonjudgmentalness, but they don’t raise their children that way… Any suburban community might be thought of as a place where people who hold certain (mostly implicit) beliefs go to live among others who think the same way.” Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning… Was the Command Line, at 57.

As Stephenson writes, and I agree with him here, nobody really believes all cultures are equal. But many do believe in the American cease-fire agreement on the issue. And part of the cease-fire agreement is that, as a general rule, you don’t talk about it; you can act on it and send your kids to Sunday school, but you don’t prostetylize and you certainly don’t argue or pick fights. So, it only looks like the liberal elites aren’t bothered by multiculturalism.

But, truly, they are. They’re just not going to lead a public charge to re-form or re-unite a more perfect mainstream culture overall. It costs too much. And for what? Why be a martyr? It reminds me of a passage from a Terry Pratchett novel: something to the effect of, the 19 police officers ran down the hallway after the violet criminal as only a bunch of officers can do, which is to say at less then full speed. After all, each thought, why should I be the first to catch up to him and get hit with his first few good punches?

To their credit, however, and to the benefit of their children, they will lead a sort of private charge; taking care that their charges, their children, don’t fall for it but get raised in a culture, in a tradition — that provides those children with, as Stephenson writes, “a basic set of tools… to think about and understand the world.”  [Emphasis added.]

Posted by James Bowery on Mon, 30 Jul 2007 03:50 | #

It seems that yet another word has been so laden with connotations as to render it without real meaning:  Progress.

How can “progress” be measured if not against the prior state of affairs and how can one know the prior state of affairs without their conservation?  If “progress” is not measured against some conserved standard, then it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Or, as I have said previously, True Liberalism Is Conservative.

Posted by PF on Mon, 30 Jul 2007 03:58 | #

“Artists are the antennae of the race, but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust their great artists.” - Ezra Pound

Translation: “Give me more power and status, you bastards.”

Posted by PF on Mon, 30 Jul 2007 04:56 | #

GW wrote:

More importantly from a group-evolutionary, cold-climate point of view, it is also the generator of technological progress.  Intelligence is group survival for us.  Its self-advocacy in the individual is a group necessity, and a signal of an endemic will to group fitness.

I’ve noted previously in relation to the IQ debate that hereditarians do not have to eliminate every trace of environment from their thesis, but environmentalists must eliminate all genetic input.  Environmentalism is an absolutist faith.  So it is precisely those evolutionary measures of organic society that liberals have put to the Pee-Cee torch.  But we, in our search for a stable basis for a post-liberal society, require to commit no such violence to individualism.

Thwup thwup, the word-arrows hit their targets.

So how are we to reconcile our restless, striving individual natures with the inherently conservative demands of organic society, given that both individualism and nepotism are evolved traits, and ethnic nepotists cannot eschew individualism any more than liberals can turn their backs on their families?

Until we reassert our rights to living space as a group, we have no ‘organic society’. After that is created, individualism can be muzzled and controlled by reference to common future—all of culture comes then under the critique of strategic ethnic planning.

Prior to this, we have been critiqueing individualism on the basis of group taste, on the basis of unthought-out custom, on the basis of religious morality, on everything but strategy. Not in the least because our misunderstanding of ourselves has caused us to intersperse a veil of ‘culture’ in our thinking where in fact blood and politics are regnant (see Classics discussion).

According to this thinking, different memes make me fundamentally different from my barbarian Mercian ancestors. Well, its bullshit. I couldn’t enjoy easy table talk with a Mercian, but that imagining is an anachronistic thought experiment with no relevance to reality, whereas the projections of evolutionary theory hold true across the whole animal kingdom (see Dawkins, Selfish Gene), and say that me and the Mercian are doomed to guard and propagate the same set of Gs, As, Cs and Ts, or give way to those who guard theirs more effectively. We can accept this, our role in the historical struggle, or we can opt out of it, but we cannot elect another.

I dont like the word ‘human’ or ‘inhuman’ used in any sense beyond the immediately physical. But we are ‘inhuman’ as a group—I mean Westerners or European peoples—because we are not trying to survive as a group.

Trying to survive is everyone’s individual experience of life, as soon as you leave your parents house. Its what seasons you, gives you your focal point, your standard of reference, and colors your life in ways that build on each other and make a single sense out of many diverse experiences.

But as a group, we make no effort to survive. So it is hardly surprising that we lack a self-understanding, a focal point, a purpose, or the many educational lessons that come from this supreme undertaking, which is the only undertaking we are capable of: surviving. That word is to be understood in the sense that Dawkins designates animals as ‘survival machines’, and includes arms races to beautify culture and life, and competition against foreign gene pools in one’s environment. It is everything we are not doing on a group level since 1960 or some say 1900.

When we receive our marching orders, the amount of individual subordination of the will necessary for the task at hand will be implicit in those orders. My opinion.

Posted by PF on Mon, 30 Jul 2007 05:19 | #

GW wrote:

We cannot replicate the same closeness to the soil and the seasons, and the grip of tradition and faith, the sense of community, of belonging to place and to generations of family who have gone before.  Most of these vivyfying and beautiful things were disaccomodated by the rise of an urbanised and, later, industrialised life.

It’s true that a lot of that is lost—the sense of belonging to generations of family however may remain. Look to uprooted Anglo-saxons living in other places—in America, Australia, the old South Africa, old Rhodesia, for examples of how to deal with this. It’s not really so bad. There are solaces in the open sky and the beauty of nature, plus the sense of adventure and surprise that the Old Country (theoretically) didn’t offer. Plus, given some time, one develops one’s own culture and puts down new roots. But losing this link to the land and people is alienating and painful, a cause of lasting dissonance, and here is a poem by someone who would know what it means to be estranged, Sephardic Jew-cum-“Englishman” Siegfried Sassoon, who wrote:

Strangeness of Heart

When I have lost the power to feel the pain
Which I in childhood waking felt
....

Sorry, I cant remember the rest and its not on the internet. Its a great poem though, too bad I couldnt share it. It articulates the alienation of a person experiencing ‘strangeness of heart’...

“I heard, and could not say
What gentle voices call from far away.”
But its even better than that.

Posted by PF on Mon, 30 Jul 2007 05:37 | #

As Stephenson writes, and I agree with him here, nobody really believes all cultures are equal. But many do believe in the American cease-fire agreement on the issue.

Thank you Scrooby! This is a clearer resolution of the motives involved than we often get. It shows the understanding-behind-the-understanding which is the real liberalism in practice. The number actually deceived, I imagine to be relatively few.

Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:56 | #

PF,

What I want to do ... what I really want to do is to philosophise Darwin, to make Salter the touchstone of our life, to turn liberalism inside out so its guts spill in the gutter.

The chink in its armour is the prior appointment individualism has with evolution.  There are a number of ways to bring that out - the handling of intelligence is only one, though an important one - and all must be uncovered, dusted off and set in place in the diadem.

We are few.  We cannot banish the global elite or greed-filled capitalism or organised Jewry, or fight on the streets against the replacing hordes.  We can only attack the zeitgeist at its critical points, and hasten its collapse.  It is not a minor undertaking.  It might not work, or work fast enough.  But for us it is the possible - and that’s all there is, I’m afraid.

Today, at the occasionally useful Daily Telegraph, a commenter named Geoff Miller succeeded in getting the following remark past the house censor:-

So we have millions of new immigrants now and predicted for the future. Massive shortfalls in housing, infrastructure and public services. Perhaps we need even more immigrants to help?

Is it surprising that so many British people now leave the UK? I did! Seven years of living in London and seeeing the exponential growth in immigrant numbers and dramatic changes in the complexion of our society made us feel more at home abroad.

We’re immigrants now! Thanks a lot NewLabour. At least those of us British who go to a new country buy our own homes, pay our way, integrate with and respect our hosts.

Our ancient homeland, for which our forbears fought so hard to keep and develop into a society we could be proud of, is being systematically trashed by the Liberal elite who hold power across the Establishment, media and ALL main political parties.

Hard fought freedoms are being taken away from us as a result of terrorism and crime imported into the UK.

Don’t think for one minute that this situation is due to incompetence or some accident - it is deliberate.

The question that should be asked is why is this being done? It could be stopped, and even reversed, quite easily.

Why do our inner cities look like third world countries? Why are the indigenous people fleeing the towns and some, like us, the country.

Suggestions anyone?

Now, where did he get these thoughts from.  They are not just his own observations.  He has picked them up , the ones about the elites, from someone else, who heard them from someone else.  And so it goes, keeping faith with the truth of things right down the line.  And how many others will read Mr Miller’s words and take due note?

This is how it goes.  This is how we can produce a critical mass among intelligent people.  WM’s bullet-headed, meanwhile, will do as they do.  Perhaps they will vote for the BNP if they are English.  But it’s for those like us to get the thinking classes, the serious internet classes, involved in the right way.

Posted by PF on Mon, 30 Jul 2007 18:15 | #

GW wrote:

What I want to do ... what I really want to do is to philosophise Darwin, to make Salter the touchstone of our life, to turn liberalism inside out so its guts spill in the gutter.

Good, thats what I want too. And to write critical investigations of history which highlight the fact that our observations are actually natural laws. Before this web activity is illegalized, someone will have archived what we have said, and under gradually increasing pressure we will have developed a coded language which keeps us talking despite censorship- the Underground going underground. And we can write programs to rewrite the archived texts—today’s explicit writings—into the coded writings which will deceive tommorow’s censors.

PF wrote:

Not in the least because our misunderstanding of ourselves has caused us to intersperse a veil of ‘culture’ in our thinking where in fact blood and politics are regnant (see Classics discussion).

What I want to show is that even without novels, without civilization, without arts and letters, our existence is self-justified. European culture does not justify the existence of European peoples, it is this existence which justifies itself according to Selfish Gene logic.

I hope people read my above statement about my coffee-table discussions with the ancient Mercian because I really believe in that and hope to expound it in future posts and explain it in detail.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Tue, 31 Jul 2007 22:49 | #

Over at Turnabout, some suggestions for a list of ready-made talking-points for our side:

What’s going on is very odd indeed. Liberalism presents us with sordid idealism, bigoted tolerance, mindless expertise, moralistic permissiveness, dogmatic agnosticism, mainstream extremism, rigidly uniform diversity, radically elitist equality, totally administered freedom and compulsory established rebellion. It promises moderation but gives us overreaching. It prizes freedom of thought but insists on correct attitudes and suppresses contrary opinion as ignorant, irrational, oppressive and dangerous. In the name of autonomy, it makes the state control everything. Rather than popular rule, it promotes distrust of the people and reliance on elites answerable to no one, and instead of benefits for women, minorities and children, it delivers family collapse, children with no fathers, feminized poverty, and one in eight young black men in prison.

[...]

Traditionalists need talking points and snappy arguments. Here’s an initial list, to which others are welcome to add:

—If liberalism is tolerant why all the propaganda and re-education programs?

—If it is based on consent, why the emphasis on judges, experts, bureaucrats and theorists?

—If it is skeptical and empirical, why the demand for radical transformation of all social arrangements everywhere?

—If liberalism emphasizes the individual and unleashes creativity why does it make everyone and everything the same?

—How can “diversity”’ (respecting differences) and “inclusiveness” (destroying the effect of differences) be consistent?

—If liberalism lets people choose their own values, how can it prescribe their opinions of others’ values?

—If choosing my own values is good, why does it become bad if I choose cultural cohesion and traditional sex roles?

—How can government be based on discussion as opposed to force when the point of government is that discussion sometimes does not work and force is needed?

—Equal celebration of cultures means that every particular cultural standard must be driven out of social life since otherwise one culture will dominate others. How is that situation different from the abolition of culture?

—What is the difference between saying someone has to treat all beliefs about God and morality as equally worthy, and saying he has to treat his own beliefs as personal tastes and thus not beliefs about God or morality at all?

—What can freedom in private life amount to if government claims the right to insist on the radical reform of family life and re-education of children? If the freedom of private life does not include the closest human relationships, what good is it?

—Liberals say public celebration of diversity does not violate conscience because in private people can still think what they like. Would it equally respect conscience if the Catholics ran things and insisted on public celebration of Catholicism while permitting private free thought?

—People value different things in themselves and others. Some value the ability to form and carry through personal life projects, others participation in group goals, others the pursuit of human excellence, others the love of God. When those views come into conflict, why is it neutral if the first view always wins?

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Wed, 01 Aug 2007 21:40 | #

Look how single white women in Europe think:  in their minds, and they come right out and say this, political correctness makes it an obligation on their part to have sex with African Negroes (in this case, a Negro from the Cameroon) and not just sex but unprotected sex, since they fear they might seem racist, might cause hurt feelings, if they ask the Negro to put on a condom.  (Hat tip to VLC posting over at Occidental Dissent.)  Imagine what kind of trouble this particular Negro would be in right about now if this were the pre-1950s American South instead of Poland?  But of course that was before the Jewish-promoted charlatan Gunnar Myrdal made his big splash ... (made his big splash on minds such as Lord Deedes; minds such as Enoch’s seem to have been safely immune).  Times have changed since then, you know ... (right, they sure have ........ and not for the better ..........).

This “white-women-have-a-moral-obligation-to-make-themselves-available-to-African-Negro-men-for-unprotected-sex” variety of PC didn’t originate in Europe, that’s for damn sure:  obviously it’s been imported from Amerikwa.  It’s the Out of Amerikwa theory of PC origins, as opposed to the Multiregional theory:  the damn stuff gets cooked up in the ‘Kwa by the usual suspects then spreads to infect the rest of the Eurosphere.  To combat it we have only to combat those in the ‘Kwa who are responsible for coming up with it.  We know who they are.  We don’t have to go to every European country separately to root it out:  the root and trunk are in the ‘Kwa; in Europe are just the branches.  Kill it at the root and trunk and its branches wither and die.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Sat, 04 Aug 2007 05:21 | #

Thras valiantly tries to get Victor Davis Hanson’s head unscrewed then screwed back on frontwards:

[Victor Davis] Hanson in City Journal:  “Mexifornia, Five Years Later”

He’s good here:

“In my own experience, the slow progress made in rural California since the 1950s of my youth —  in which the county inspected our farm’s rural dwellings, eliminated the once-ubiquitous rural outhouse, shut down substandard housing, and fined violators, in hopes of providing a uniformly humane standard of residence for all rural residents —  has been abandoned in just a few years of laissez-faire policy toward illegal aliens.  My own neighborhood is reverting to conditions common about 1950 but with the insult of far higher tax rates added to the injury of nonexistent enforcement of once-comprehensive statutes.  The government’s attitude at all levels is to punish the dutiful citizen’s misdemeanors while ignoring the alien’s felony, on the logic that the former will at least comply while the latter either cannot or will not.”

But goes off his rocker here (clearly switching to an alter-ego personality):

“Of course, the ultimate solution to the illegal immigration debacle is for Mexican society to bring itself up to the levels of affluence found in the United States by embracing market reforms of the sort we have seen in South Korea, Taiwan, and China.”

It might also help Mexico to be more like South Korea, Taiwan, or China, to have an average national IQ of 100-105 like those Asian countries. A magic wand might be the solution.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Sun, 05 Aug 2007 04:05 | #

In this recent Turnabout log entry Jim Kalb replies to someone who’d asked why liberal élites aren’t bothered by multiculturalism, and after making his point in the entry he invites readers to give their opinion as to whether “there’s a better way to make the point.”  Today, Clark Coleman posted a response:

“One thing that is probably not too convincing about this presentation is that it concentrates on bureaucracies and those who actively support them.  Your liberal neighbor has no great love for bureaucracy and does not picture himself as defending them or desiring their expansion, even if that is the indirect result of some of his policy positions.

“I think the jargon here is too bureaucratic and bloodless and technocratic.  For your average liberal fellow citizen, it is very simple.  With the basic Rousseauian vision of human nature, the environment is to blame for all problems.  The dominant culture is therefore responsible for the current environment, not the ‘oppressed’ and non-dominant cultures.  Everything wrong with the world is therefore to be blamed on whites, the West, males, Christendom, etc.  Everything else needs to be supported in order to combat the oppressive hegemony.

“With this worldview in mind, all of the conservative whining about double standards and hypocrisy on the left is seen to be silly.  Double standards are to be celebrated if they support the underdog against the dominant culture.  You know you are a compassionate liberal person if you always support the underdog.  That is the essence of liberalism, although it comes in liberal and hard leftist varieties.”